Can Reddit—the Internet’s Greatest Authenticity Machine—Survive Its Own IPO?
Can Reddit—the Internet’s Greatest Authenticity Machine—Survive Its Own IPO?
When thousands of subreddits went dark in protest, it exposed the tension at the core of Reddit. Is the web’s most reliably human forum a gold mine for investors, or an old-fashioned dumpster fire?
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If you are looking to talk to actual people and hear actual opinions, the simple fact is Reddit is the best major site for it. There is nothing like it, in particular smaller hobby/technical/interest communities. And I say this as somebody who has a comment history full of “fuck Reddit.“ There is a reason Google searches are only useful if you put “Reddit“ at the end now. If you find the appropriate Reddit thread you are generally getting some of the best advice or info out there, especially with technical issues. For some hobbies/interests, the relevant sub is the only major community with any regular activity.
Is there astroturfing? Yes. Are there tons of corporate interests manipulating it? Of course. But compared to Facebook, Twitter, etc. it may as well will be public access to their corporate owned cable.
Obligatory “Fuck Reddit.” And I mean it lol. But the above is still true.
Well, yes, it was something beautiful and amazing and we all loved it very dearly, or we wouldn't be so passionate about what management has done to it and continues to do to it.
Ever since quitting Reddit and attempting to delete all my comments, search for “topic Reddit” yields good results. I have also noticed that all those best results are between 3-11 years old.
And that's becoming it's own problem with search, especially with technical questions. The good answer is also old and out of date.
Reddit has become useful to see what power wants.
And reddit is a digital labor camp. The head make hundreds of millions a year. The mods work for free.
I know what Reddit was. I was a moderator for a sizable sub for many years lol you’re not going to get any disagreement from me there. None of what you wrote above is incompatible with what I wrote. You need to think of it in relative terms. I am not saying that Reddit is some truly authentic experience, far from it. But if you’re looking for legitimate answers to your hobby/technical/fandom questions, name a site that comes even close that 1) isn’t exponentially worse/more corporate dominated and/or 2) is actually big enough to get responses.
Discord is the next closest thing because of how servers are set up but it’s a terrible repository for information because you need to be invited (no google searching/indexing) and structurally you can’t find anything that’s more than like 5min old.
To compare forced labor camps where the alternative is being murdered to people making the active choice to volunteer to serve as moderators is a comparison so lacking in perspective that I'd expect to only find it on Reddit, but I guess Lemmy has managed to foster the same kind of behavior.
Are you going to compare Reddit killing the API to the Holocaust next?
You had a point until the response became twice as long and disproportionate to the original comment. He didn’t even say “forced.”
I agree the term is overly hyperbolic, but let’s maybe dial it back dude
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Well, I think people need to be a little patient with folks who use terms like “dumb” and “moron,” by it behooves you to maybe consider why people are bringing that up now.
It’s kind of like the R word. Mocking people for things they can’t control, especially things with a history of leading to persecution, is not OK. “Moron” unfortunately does have a very troubled history as a term so they aren’t wrong. Same reason I am trying not to use words like “crazy” when describing people’s behavior.
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Forced is part of what a “labor camp” is.
Labor camp is not a place you send your kids in the summer.
Reddit was great in some ways. It's been on the decline for a while and I expect the IPO can only accelerate that. Unless we're all very lucky it's not going to explode in flames and crash into the ditch. It will just shamble on, gradually disillusioning all the people who still cling to it long after it's lost its soul.
That is what was so upsetting about last summer. I had a lot invested in Reddit. Emotionally, mentall, hell just time-wise. After the “landed gentry“ comment, I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. It was so disrespectful and completely missed the mark for why most moderators do what they do. Like I get it, many people dog moderators and think they’re just “power tripping jannies.” But fact of the matter is most moderators are perfectly fine people just volunteering their time to foster a community they care about.
So for the CEO of a company whose entire existence is owed to the labor of unpaid users that they never talk to or interact with in any meaningful way outside of a handful of mod teams to come out and call us “entitled” and other adjectives because we are protesting a terrible decision and advocating for people with disabilities…well, many of us left lol
This is the Internet in general, i think... when you compare how many sites i used a decade ago to now, its cvastly fewer. five or so years ago, that would have probably been due to things consolidating... But now it is just because almost everything online is relatively valueless. it is a soulless wasteland with little to offer. Sure, ym digitital usage is enormous, but i engaged somewhat reguarly on internet sites. Now its nothing to me. Hell, I dont even really keep up on Lemmy anymore. Smaller use internet was thrilling. What it is now is pretty much balls. Its paying bills, or checking accts.
There’s much more value outside of the screen than inside the screen. The internet is finally becoming less an escape from reality and more just an extension of reality. This feels very anecdotal, I wonder how much of this perspective just comes with age.
It will just shamble on, gradually disillusioning all the people who still cling to it long after it’s lost its soul.
Same as the rest of the corporate internet and digital services. I wonder whether people will ever lose patience with it and abandon these things.
There will always be new, perhaps younger, users who come through who don't know what it was like before. And of course, there will always be more veteran users who perhaps don't care. I care that reddit is going to shit, but I'm still on it (less than pre-APIgate though). On the other hand, my brother who's been on reddit almost as long as me, doesn't care. As long as gets his memes or whatever else he uses reddit for, he'll be there. He barely knew about that protests last summer.
It seems that the only way a social media actually collapses is when the company itself pulls the plug. Twitter has been circling the drain since Elon bought it, but it's still one of the main nodes of information from companies, governments, journalists, and just regular people. It's still used by millions of people daily, even if it's also used by millions of bots, too. Google+ was in a sad state for a bit, but there were still users. It only died when Google finally shut it down. I think Vine was in a similar situation back in the day.
Debatable, especially with AI spambots and (mechanical) turks. How do you know? You could be chatting with a bot or some poor, low paid schlub working in a digital sweatshop somewhere in Asia.